Month: March 2007

Events

Glorious Friday’s glorious news

16 March 2007 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

Billie and David



Doctor Who

  • Stephen Fry didn’t have the time to finish his Doctor Who episode
  • David Tennant drops in on Pipes at the theatre
  • Doctor Who and Torchwood have turned Cardiff into one of the top 10 tourist destinations in the UK. You mean it wasn’t before?

Film

  • Cate Blanchett is in Indiana Jones 4
  • More Watchmen info. The ‘girls’ are going to be sexier apparently
  • Jackie Chan says Brett Ratner doesn’t know much about directing action
  • There’s a script for Trainspotting 2

Commercials

British TV

  • Stephen Fry’s Kingdom gets a second series before the first has even aired.
  • Not got digital yet? If you live in Whitehaven, you’re screwed

US TV

Thursday’s bright and sunny news

15 March 2007 Rob Buckley 5 Comments

Doctor Who

  • A little bit too much time on your hands? How about building a replica TARDIS with working arcade game inside it then? Full instructions await!
  • Billy Piper’s Belle de Jour is happening. No one will notice though because it’s on ITV2 [free registration required]



Film

  • A sequel to Superman Returns has been pushed back since Bryan Singer’s decided to direct something else in the interim
  • Jake Gyllenhaal is rumoured to be playing Captain Marvel in Shazam! No word on whether he’s going to pass himself off as a 13-year-old kid
  • Images and scene descriptions from Transformers
  • Mad Max 4 is on, but without Mad Mel

Art

  • Tutankhamun’s treasures will be on display in Britain for the first time in 30 years in The O2 in November

British TV

  • ITV Play may have been replaced by ITV2+1 (that’s not ITV3, BTW), but a movie channel may be the long-term replacement [subscription required]
  • Saturday Live: series one is coming to DVD on 16th April
  • Gareth Hunt has died [free registration required]

US TV

  • Get NBC shows on demand on your cell phone
  • Raquel Welch is joining Jeffrey Tambor’s pilot
  • Dean Cain’s working his way back on to proper television with a pilot. Plus other casting news
  • The Saint is being remade by TNT
  • Prison Break‘s creator promises season three will be brutal. Yey?
  • David Duchovny’s show has been given the go-ahead by Showtime
  • CBS has picked up Jason Biggs’ pilot I’m In Hell
  • Zooey Deschanel talks about Tin Man
  • That big gay ST:TNG episode is finally to be made as part of the New Voyages
  • All the actors from The Nine appear to have found jobs

Wednesday morning news

14 March 2007 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Doctor Who

Comics

  • Captain America not dead, as predicted?

Film

  • Hayley Atwell is the new Julia Flyte in Brideshead Revisited
  • John Waters is making a kids’ film
  • The inevitable (and partially justified) nitpicks of 300 by historians begins

    There’s going to be a Transporter 3

British TV

US TV

  • Interviews with the Heroes cast by Kristin
  • Bravo has bought Television Without Pity
  • Dr Evil aka Viacom has finally sued YouTube/Google for $1 billion
  • Michael Shanks is guest starring on 24
  • Lost, Scrubs, Smallville and CSI: Miami spoilers on Ask Ausiello
US TV

Review: The Wedding Bells

13 March 2007 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

The Wedding Bells

In the US: Fridays, 9/8c, Fox

In the UK: Not yet acquired.

Some of you might be wondering why I never got round to reviewing the first episode of David E Kelley’s new series, The Wedding Bells, which aired last Friday in the US.

It’s cos it’s rubbish. It’s David E Kelley by numbers. Watch Ally McBeal or Boston Legal for a few episodes, imagine what a show by him about wedding planners would be like and you can fill in the blanks yourself. Don’t believe me? Okay, which of David E Kelley’s shows did this line come from: “When men are attracted to women, it’s chemical; with women, it’s cognitive”? Could be any of them, couldn’t it?

Anyway, I tried to sit down and say something about it, but my mind went completely blank, the show is that insipid.

Continue reading “Review: The Wedding Bells”

US TV

Third-episode verdict: The Winner

13 March 2007 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

The Winner's Carusometer4-Major-Caruso

Poor Carusometer. How can you cope? First, The Black Donnellys. Now The Winner‘s messing around with the whole third-/fifth-episode verdict thing. Showing two episodes per week? Curse you, Fox.

Still, time to report back. It was all going so well, sort of, last week. While not the best comedy series in the world, pioneering nothing and having the usual anaemic female characters, The WInner still had a relatively high chuckle count.

This week, it went into a slow plummet as the show veered first into cringe comedy before hurling itself into blatantly offensive misogyny. It’s all very well having Rob Corddry as a 13 year old boy in a man’s body, but does he have to be the same rude, crude, stupid 13-year-old in every other US TV show since the dawn of time? Why couldn’t he have been a junior Alex Keaton or something? In the first few episodes, he had a certain innocence, but now, he’s offensive and not particularly funny.

So disappointing.

The Medium is Not Enough hereby declares The Winner is a 4 or “Major Caruso” on The Carusometer quality scale. A Major Caruso corresponds to a show that David Caruso might exec produce or star in, ensuring that every script consists entirely of one-liners, fat-jokes and pratfalls. If anyone questions his decisions, he will tell them to watch ‘real comedians’ like Carrot Top or Jim Davidson, who only coincidentally have red hair.